Africa has lost a nobel Kenyan daughter as Green Belt Movement announces the passing of its founder and chair, Prof Wangari Muta Maathai.

Professor Doctor Wangari Muta Maathai, known to be the first women from eastern and central Africa, that earned the doctorate veterinary anatomy, has passed away at age 71 years.

Africa has lost a mother, role model, tireless academic, and a bravely borne, after a long illness of cancer. An inspiration to many women across Africa through inspiration and vision, she will be remembered.

Wangari Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964). She subsequently earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966).

She pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi where she also taught veterinary anatomy. She became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively.

In both cases, she was the first woman to attain those positions in the region. Wangari Maathai was active in the National Council of Women of Kenya in 1976-87 and was its chairman in 1981-87. It was while she served in the National Council of Women that she introduced the idea of planting trees with the people in 1976 and continued to develop it into a broad-based, grassroots organization whose main focus is the planting of trees with women groups in order to conserve the environment and improve their quality of life.

However, through the Green Belt Movement she has assisted women in planting more than 20 million trees on their farms and on schools and church compounds.

Prof. Wangari Muta Maathai started the Green Belt Movement in 1977, by working with women to improve their livelihoods, by increasing their access to resources like firewood for cooking and clean water.

She became a great advocate for better management of natural resources and for sustainability, equity, and justice. Prof. Maathai was elected to parliament and made assistant minister for environment in President Mwai Kibaki's first government in 2003.

In 1986, the Movement established a Pan African Green Belt Network and has exposed over 40 individuals from other African countries to the approach. Some of these individuals have established similar tree planting initiatives in their own countries or they use some of the Green Belt Movement methods to improve their efforts.

Today, countries that have successfully launched such initiatives in Africa, includes Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, etc.

In September 1998, she launched a campaign of the Jubilee 2000 Coalition, where she has embarked on new challenges, playing a leading global role as a co-chair of the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign, which seeks cancellation of the unpayable backlog debts of the poor countries in Africa by the year 2000. Her campaign against land grabbing and rapacious allocation of forests land has caught the limelight in the recent past.

Professor Maathai’s departure is untimely and a very great loss to all who knew her.

Sources: Various